A Riotous Symphony
by Scribbler
Summary: A collection of drabbles and short ficlets inspired by songs about life, love and Light versus Darkness. NOTE - NOT SONGFICS. Part Six: Tifa can't help chasing Cloud, no matter where he goes or how dangerous it is. Tifa/Cloud
1. Confessions of a Broken Heart

**Disclaimer****: **So very not mine.

**A/N****:** Okay so the brief was this: Pick a character, pairing, or fandom you like, turn on your music player and put it on random/shuffle, then write a ficlet related to or inspired by each song that plays. You only have the time frame of the song to finish; you start when the song starts, and stop when it's over. No lingering afterwards! At the moment I have thirteen of these to share, but there wil probably be more as they're bloody addictive.

**A/N Part Deux****:** Nobody is to laugh at the things I have on my music player. Also, these are NOT SONGFICS! The songs are just for inspiration.

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_**A Riotous Symphony **_

© July/August 2008.

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**1. **_**Confessions of a Broken Heart**_** – Lindsey Lohan**

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Yuffie sometimes sits out in the Bailey and wonders where her clan went. She's not morbid about it, but she surprises people by not trying to drop water-balloons on them over the ramparts, or see how far she can spit, or even pull one of her death-defying stunts scaling the walls to the turrets without a winch. Nobody can quite believe it when they come out to find her sitting quietly, kicking her heels, deep in thought.

Aerith sometimes sits next to her, but she's so full of her own thoughts about Cloud that Yuffie feels bad about filling her up with what-ifs not her own. Likewise Tifa, though not in the same way. Girls are supposed to gossip, but the quietest times of Yuffie's life are spent in the company of her two best female friends.

Mostly Yuffie wonders what happened to her father when Radiant Garden fell. There's never been any news about the Wutai Clan, but she doubts Godo would go down without a fight.

Then again, once upon a time they thought that about Lord Ansem, too.

She reflects that her dad was actually a lot like Cloud – a hell of a fighter, tenacious as hell, and a bit buggy in the head.

"Hey, brat."

"Get lost, Squall."

"It's Leon, and you're late for dinner."

She leans backwards, unbending from her perch into a bridge and then a handstand, finally propelling herself onto her feet wit her arms outstretched. She grins at Leon, who just rolls his eyes and turns away from her.

Leon is nothing like Cloud. He wouldn't run out on them to chase his own demons. He's nothing like her dad, either, and that's probably a good thing, because Leon wouldn't just fall into darkness without a fight, he wouldn't fall at all.

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	2. Take Me Home

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**2. **_**Take Me Home **_**– Phil Collins**

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Larxene goes back to her Other's world only once. It's one of the few Nobody homeworlds still standing, though none of them can figure out why. It's not special. In actual fact it's a poxy little place, like a boat full of woodworm and dry rot, with black mould growing on the ceilings and walls, and basins under gaping holes to catch the water when it rains – and it rains all the damn time.

She stands in the capital city's main square and stares contemplatively up at the buildings. There are still people in them, but no-one she knows. There's a sense of desolation to the place, though her Other's memories paint it as bustling and full of life. Then again, at the time her Other was pretty chirpy and lively herself.

Larxene doesn't remember the last time she felt chirpy. She doesn't have a specific memory of when the chirpiness left, like a bird shot out of the sky with a well-placed shuriken. It just … stopped being there as the black shadows encroached, and the rumours of spirit-stealing demons increased. Her clan should've been happy at the sudden upsurge in work from people who wanted them to take care of this strange new threat, but they weren't. They were kind of fatalistic about it, actually, as though they saw (or at least accepted) before everyone else that the end wasn't an explosion or a magic war, but the intractable shuffle of small feet.

Fearful eyes watching her around twitching curtains, Larxene calmly calls down lightning to set fire to everything, and then leaves through a portal without looking back.

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	3. In the Sea

****

A/N -

It's important to know that this song came from the soundtrack to _The Last Unicorn_.

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**3. **_**In the Sea **_**– America**

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Ariel turns onto her back as she swims, tickling the bellies of the seahorse foals and giggling as they whinny in delight. One swipe with her tail takes her out of the paddock where the royal steeds are kept, away from the mares and their young, though she waves as she leaves.

The gentle sound of music signals she's nearing her target. He's in his usual spot beneath the overhanging coral, bright pink in colour and chosen because he says it's beautiful and beautiful things inspire him. He was always saying stuff like that – one of the many reasons the other Atlantean boys tease him and drove him into hiding like this. Ariel isn't complaining – they never would've met otherwise, since he's just a commoner and she's a princess. She befriended him after he rescued her and sheltered her in one of his many hiding places when sharks got into the paddocks and caused a stampede. Afterwards the royal guards came looking for her, and she gripped his hands and begged him to meet her again so she could say thank you properly. She gave him a Snorlack Pipe from her Surface World collection, which he told her is meant to play music, contradicting Scuttle's story that humans use it to scratch their lower backs.

Sure enough, there he is, strumming something stringed and strange-shaped from his extensive assortment of self-made instruments. He smiles when he spots her and she sinks down beside him, touching tailtips in a way she'd never dare with any of the stuffy boys at court.

"You okay?"

"Better now you're here. I was having trouble with the third verse, but I get inspired when you're around."

"Writing songs again?"

"Yup."

"What about this time?"

"Ever hear of unicorns?"

"They're supposed to be what happens when seahorses and narwhals have babies right?" She frowns. "But they're only a fairytale meant for little kids, Myde."

He smiles and plucks a few seaweed strings. "Not the way I tell it."

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	4. I Will Be Home Then

**A/N:** Names inspired by the fact the first Sora I ever ran across was in the Digimon dub, which was also the show that got me into fanfiction.

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**4. **_**I Will Be Home Then**_** – The Decemberists**

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Mimi was a patient woman. She had to be, with Sora for a son. From morning until evening, January to December, he was always getting into scrapes. When he was little it wasn't so bad – fingers caught in the plughole and up faucets, gum in his hair, getting his head stuck in the school railings – but as he grew older the scrapes got bigger, and the implications deeper. Mimi couldn't go to the fishmonger's for a week when Sora was pulled up in the tuna nets after swimming out too far, and she'd never been able to look the mayor in the eye again after Sora tried to 'help' her gardener with the weeding and pulled up all her priceless orchids.

Sora was a good boy. Everybody said so. A little slapdash, and jumped feet-first into situations where he felt there was injustice, but a good boy. That was where she was grateful for Kairi and Riku, his level-headed and more sensible friends. Sora's heart was in the right place, but they made sure he didn't stick it on a bull's-eye and invite all comers to take pot-shots.

She could only hope they were still looking after him wherever they were. Bad enough when Sora went missing and she only remembered _afterwards_ that she even _had_ a little boy whose mouth she used to wipe free of baked bean sauce; then Kairi vanished too, and Mimi had never felt so helpless. She was Sora's mother. Mothers are supposed to keep their children safe, not forget about them and get on with their lives ignoring the spare room and the empty bed with the rumpled covers.

She sat at the breakfast bar with Yolei, Riku's mother, sipping coffee and talking of nothing until she suddenly slammed the mug into its saucer and said, "They'll come home. It's Christmas soon. Sora could never resist your mince pies."

"It's not the first Christmas they've missed," Yolei said sadly, almost resignedly, showing a little of her son's fatalism.

"They'll come home," Mimi insisted. Sora had to get his unreasonable optimism some somewhere. "They'll be back soon. I'm sure of it."

Sora was a good boy. He wouldn't stay away forever. He'd remember his mother, wherever he was, she was sure of it.

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	5. Sun Goes Down

**A/N:** Come _on_, people. I'm dying over here. A little feedback please? I never figured the Kingdom Hearts fandom was a quiet one.

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**5. **_**Sun Goes Down**_** – David Jordan**

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"So _this _is Halloween Town?"

Kairi looks at the overhanging pumpkins and red-stained rags dangling from nooses on tree branches. There's even a cauldron full of bubbling green something-or-other. She and Selphie had to dance around a cauldron like that during their elementary school play, when Tidus got roped into playing a witch because there weren't enough girls and used superglue for his warts. They didn't come off for three weeks, and he had to go around with a nose like a rotten turnip.

She sucks in a breath. "It's very …"

"Scary? Terrifying? Frightening? Creepy?"

"Icky."

Sora pulls a face at her choice of adjective. Jack doesn't look too impressed either – though it's difficult to tell with a naked skull for a face.

"_Icky_?" he says incredulously. "The most superb spooks and splendid spectres we have to offer, and all you can say is it's _icky_?"

"Well it is. Bloody clothes and howling thingummyjiggers aren't frightening. I've seen too many horror movies for them to be effective. I'll bet in daylight this place just looks kind of …" She peers at the gnarled trees with faces cut into them, and the empty fountain covered in cobwebs. "Well, kind of sad."

Jack tips his head at her. "Horror movies?" He says the words like they're a foreign language. "What are 'horror movies'?"

Sally takes his arm. She may have chunks of flesh missing and scars like train-tracks all over her body, but she looks sweet as she holds his elbow close to her stomach and rests her head on the place where a bicep should be. "I think you may have a new resource in making Halloween extra scary this year, Jack."

Jack lifts an eyebrow at Kairi. "But she's so … _pink_."

"Kairi fingers the place where her own skull is showing through her hairline, and the warts on her nose that _aren't _stuck on with superglue, and will vanish as soon as she, Sora and Riku leave this world. "You need to look beyond the clichés. If you can pull off scary while wearing pink, you've got it made."

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	6. I Want You to Want Me

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**6. **_**I Want You to Want Me**_** – Letters to Cleo**

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Tifa chases Cloud. It's a running joke – emphasis on the running part. She chases him from world to world, and when he lands on one for a while she chases him all over it.

He never seems to acknowledge her presence until she's right up in his face. Then he gives her this strange stare, like he's never seen her before, or like he's wondering what she's _for_. She doesn't care, except when she does. When she doesn't care she flips a careless salute that would've had their commanding officer yelling when they were both still cadets, and then carries on punching Heartless like she has something to prove. When she does care she sits in her Gummi Ship and sobs while the engines warm up.

"Why?" he asks her once after she rescues him from a cluster of red and black things with luminous yellow eyes and hypodermic needles for fingers – the remnants of a hospital the darkness consumed. "Why are you following me?"

She looks for recognition in his eyes; or, failing that, some memory of the man he used to be – no, the fresh-faced boy he was before General Sephiroth got his hands on him. Cloud was once an eager and willing cadet before his greatest hero filled his heart with the darkness that's slowly burning away his ventricles, arteries and veins like sulphuric acid.

"Because I want you to be happy."

"I can't ever be happy until I've faced Sephiroth," he says, eyes shadowing.

"That's why I'm following you."

He doesn't understand. He _can't_ understand. There's no room left in him for love until he realises the light he lost isn't as far away as he thinks. So Tifa keeps chasing him with tenacity of a bulldog with a locked jaw, and doesn't listen when people laugh or Cloud tells her to leave him alone.

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End file.
